Bittrex Review – One Critical Issue You Need to Know About

Bittrex is a US cryptocurrency exchange that has grown in popularity among crypto traders since launching its operations in December 2014. Its steady growth has made it one of the most preferred altcoin exchanges on the market.

Much of Bittrex’s success is the result of its founding team of experienced security professionals, which is dedicated to maintaining a simple, fast, reliable, and secure exchange. With plenty of cases of collapse and hacked exchanges in the industry, traders appreciate a platform provider that doesn’t lose their money.

Bittrex was founded by Bill Shihara (cofounder and CEO), Richie Lei, Rami Kawach, and Ryan Hentz. It’s based out of Las Vegas, Nevada. The company makes a point to comply with US money laws, which is evident in the setup and structure of its exchange.

Signing Up with Bittrex

Signing up with Bittrex is a pretty straightforward process, especially if all you’re looking to trade are cryptocurrency pairs. With a name, email address, date of birth, and phone number verification, you can start trading using a basic verified account in under thirty minutes.

Higher-tier verifications require the sharing of more details to unlock a broader option of facilities. For example, the enhanced verified tier allows traders to make deposits and withdrawals in fiat wire transfers worth $10,000 or higher.

Variety of Altcoins

Once you have a verified account, an excellent variety of altcoins compared to any exchange will be available to you. Over 250 altcoins are available for trading against Bitcoin, Ethereum, and fiat currencies in the form of USD-Tether and BitCNY.

While some pump-and-dump coins have managed to slip past the vetting process, Bittrex’s goal is to raise the quality of the overall coin listings. If there’s an ICO that’s just completed, a new blockchain launching, or even a recently branched fork, you’re bound to find it on Bittrex.

Hard Fork Coins

Bittrex carefully reviews all coins from impending hard forks or airdrops before providing full support and debiting customers’ accounts. Often, as soon as the networks are stable enough, several coins birthed from hard forks are made available to trade.

One example is the recent Zclassic (ZCL) coin fork, which was managed professionally to support the new ZenCash (ZEN) coin. Another upcoming Bitcoin Gold hard fork is still under review, but once it’s successful, BTG will be added for trading just like in the Bitcoin Cash fork of Bitcoin and the Ethereum Classic fork of Ethereum.

Trading, Withdrawals, and Fees

Unfortunately, Bittrex doesn’t yet support leverage and margin trading, and only spot trading is on offer for all the coin listings. The exchange is working on a new trading engine that will support margin trading and advanced order types soon.

That said, however, the current trading engine seamlessly glues together automated trading features, such as stop loss, good ’til canceled (GTC), and instant buy or sell, with all the standard technical charting tools a trader needs. Clients continually commend the exchange’s trading interface for its quick loading times, with no incidences of hanging or lags.

Fees and Volumes

Trading fees are slightly higher on Bittrex compared to the industry average. Additionally, there are neither rebates for higher-volume trades nor incentive models for takers and makers. A 0.25% flat commission is applied to all trades.

However, fees have done little to dampen the number of customers signing up. Bittrex has seen a visible increase in its trading volumes since 2014, and it’s now catching up to Poloniex, the altcoin exchange with the highest volumes. In just under three years, Bittrex’s volumes have scaled up from as low as 0.1% to 0.5% of Poloniex’s volumes.

Still, Bittrex has faster withdrawal times and more reliable order execution than Poloniex despite its relatively low volumes.

Security

Unmatched security is Bittrex’s most significant selling point. The founding team, which comprises computer security experts with over 40 years of combined experience, prioritizes security in all its development decisions. Three years after launching, Bittrex has achieved the rare feat of never having suffered any breaches or having lost any customer funds.

Bittrex has in place an elastic, multistage wallet strategy that always keeps 80%–90% of funds safely offline. Meanwhile, on the customer side, two-factor authentication is a must for all withdrawals and API calls; if it’s not activated, a limit on withdrawals is enforced for customers without 2FA set up.

Having said all that, a user recently contacted us to let us know that his account was hacked. Apparently hackers were able to access his Bittrex account and change the 2FA settings without any need for email verification. The user was basically then locked out. Bittrex did not respond to this case as of the time of writing. So a word of warning – don’t use Bittrex without 2FA enabled, since if someone gets your account details he can effectively lock you out.

If you want to avoid such an inconvenience, it’s best to have your credentials on hand in case your account is flagged. Most complaints found online are from users in emerging markets; Bittrex’s low-tier requirements seem to appeal to unserved markets.

Even with its top-notch security, Bittrex’s biggest letdown is its customer support. Public opinion on the speed of response to support tickets is dismal when it comes to verification, customer service issues, and follow-ups on accounts that are under review.

Conclusion

Although Bittrex can be considered an excellent exchange for beginners and traders looking for a robust, secure platform on which to trade multiple cryptocurrencies, its lack of customer support and recent freezing of accounts make it a questionable choice.

Too often, exchanges sacrifice customer support and satisfaction to continue operating and expanding in the ever-evolving crypto space. In this case, the public outrage seems too loud to ignore.

Use Bittrex with caution for now, and don’t deposit any amount you can’t afford to have frozen for a certain period of time. That, however, is an unfortunate truth for almost every Bitcoin exchange out there.

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bota5

Nothing but thieves Claim they can’t confirm my identity, even though my bank and many other businesses have no problem doing so. Did not warn they will accept deposits without providing proof but will refuse to let you withdraw without proving your identity to them first, which they make no effort in doing even when you give them all them all the information they need to do so. The only warning about this policy is buried in the help section, where one goes AFTER the problem happens, not before. They also have a policy that states they will claim coins… Read more »

4 Reply

10 months ago

Guest

PlayeronCurrency

I have been register with bittrex for 6 maybe 8 months now . I deposit $1k or maybe 2k in total then withdraw it and stop with trading but i left some money here and i want get it back and also use bittrex ofc because here is a ton of altcoins etc.. (MY DEPOSIT WAS IN BITCOIN OFC ) The problem is I have upload my Russian Passport few times they did not accept it then i upload International passport on English , still the same and small issue i type on russian keywords my name and some other… Read more »

4 Reply

11 months ago

Guest

K K

original issue started three months ago. Took 6 weeks to get an auto response, followed the directions to resolve the issues, bam locked down my accounts. Now I have three tickets in, dating back over three months. Still no response. DO NOT USE BITTREX. Seriously people. Stay away. It is not worth the sleepless nights.
Its funny how this site gives them a 7.9 rating. Let them be the ones that are unable to access their tens of thousands of dollars and see how they feel then. Again STAY AWAY FROM BITTREX

indeed customer support is delinquent. 40 days waiting for response from support. In the meanwhile I can’t move more than 3 btc per day. Now they downgraded me to 0.4 btc per day. Why? I’m not a bit suspicious or belong to any generalization: I’m white, born and raised in Europe, can and do travel to US, present in lots of online places so easily verifiable. 40 days makes no sense – how long should one wait? 2 months? a year? 2 years? what’s the standard for customer support response time of a cryptoexchange? And why are they doing this?… Read more »

Worst customer support I have ever seen. It’s been more than one month I opened a ticket and still no answer. 252 PAY tokens just disappeared from my wallet. I have accumulated PAY token from month without selling one of them and I keep all my buying in blockfolio to be sure of how many token I hold. One day I just realised my bittrex PAY wallet does ot match what I got in blockfolio, I double checked all my buying history on bittrex and it look like one order went wrong. They debit me my BTC but didnt not… Read more »

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11 months ago

Guest

amir

hello all
bittrex disabled my account for 40 days ago to now…
my positions are open and in lost…

I had about 5 BTC worth of altcoins in Bittrex and they disabled my enhanced account for close to 2 months.
Now my altcoins just worth about 1 BTC and really lost big hard earned money because i lost my trading opportunities.
Please some one tell me how i can collect such this amount of money again and who is responsible for this big loss?